


you make a fool of death with your beauty

by wekeepeachotherhuman



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Demon Hunters, Demonic Possession, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mutual Pining, Night Terrors, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Post S2, Prophetic Visions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-16 10:25:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15434991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wekeepeachotherhuman/pseuds/wekeepeachotherhuman
Summary: Marcus hears God looking out over a dirty river. He hears nothing butTomas, Tomas, Tomas.He seeks help tracking the demons that Tomas and Mouse are following with old friends. Demon hunters, who work unapologetically outside of the Church.





	1. you’ll always be my favourite ghost

**Author's Note:**

> So. My first dive into Exorcist fic. This thing would not leave me alone, so I figured the best thing I could do for my writer brain was to just get it out there. 
> 
> The next chapter will be Tomas/Mouse-centric. By the third chapter, they’ll all find one another. It’ll be great. I swear. 
> 
> As always, you reading this is so appreciated! It really means the world. Any kudos/comments/bookmarks literally send me over the moon!
> 
> Title is from Hunger by Florence + the Machine. All chapter titles will be from songs off of High as Hope because that album speaks to my soul and is about all I listen to these days.

Marcus is seven years old again. And he’s crying. Though that isn’t very telling; Marcus cries for everything and for everyone. He doesn’t know where he is.There’s nothing around him that could give him any sort of indication. There’s a world around him, of course, but it seems to fall off at its edges.

He’s suddenly overcome by the weight of whatever’s in his hands. He looks down at a smoking gun. It’s still warm and it makes Marcus feel sick. He’s seven years old again and he knows exactly where he is. He holds his breath. He can still feel hot tears coursing down his cheeks. But he’s otherwise still, listening for his father’s laugh, his mother’s scream, _anything_ . He’s spent most of his life in shadow and darkness. He knows better than to call out. But he desperately wants to. For God, for Father Sean, for… _Tomas_. His hands ache for Tomas. His hair, his cheek, anything that might feel familiar.

Chains fall against rotting hardwood somewhere behind him. Marcus turns towards the sound. There’s a priest with his back to him, working silently and ardently. It’s Father Sean. Marcus would know him anywhere. Marcus stays rooted where he is. He feels his chest begin to heave. His palms feel clammy around the iron of the gun in his hands.

“Aren’t you going to help me, boy?” Father Sean asks without turning around.

“No,” Marcus stammers around a shaky breath and a sob.

Father Sean stops what he’s doing. He turns to look at Marcus. His eyes are swimming with possessiveness. He takes a step towards Marcus. Marcus takes a step back.

“Banished from grace,” Father Sean starts. Marcus bites back the words he knows come next. Father Sean keeps getting closer and closer. Marcus finds his back up against a stone wall. _A basement_. They’re in a basement. There are demons everywhere, but Marcus can’t take his eyes off the one standing right in front of him. “You are forgiven.”

“No,” Marcus says, shaking his head.

“Profane thing, ashes on the earth,” Father Sean continues, ignoring him entirely. “You are redeemed. Outcast.” The priest is close enough to touch Marcus now. Father Sean reaches outward. Marcus feels his hand on his shoulder, slowly burning away at his clothes and the skin underneath. “Fallen angel,” Father Sean says. He forces Marcus down onto his knees. The floor is cold and hard underneath him. Marcus feels panic start to rise in him. He feels sick and cold. His hands ache for Tomas. He closes his eyes, wills the room around him away. Wills everything away, until he can’t feel anything… except for the loaded weight of the gun in his hands. Marcus’ eyes shoot open. He looks up at Father Sean, then presses the nose of the gun against Father Sean’s belly. “You…”

When Father Sean recognizes the gun against his guts, he closes his mouth. He looks down at Marcus. Shocked and hurt.

“This isn’t what happened,” he mutters.

Marcus forces himself to stand. He feels pure anger and vengeance coursing through his veins. He takes a step forward, and this time, Father Sean takes a step backward. He’s afraid. Marcus can feel that. And he _loves_ it. He feeds off of Father Sean’s fear. He doesn’t need to think twice: Marcus is only seven years old, but he pulls the trigger.

Somewhere, far-off, he hears someone say: “Marcus, don’t!” And he wonders vaguely: that sounded like Tomas. But the room continues to fall off around him, Father Sean is swallowed up by blackness, the gun is swallowed up, Marcus himself is swallowed up and left with only feeling the warmth of morning sunlight beating in through cheap, shitty curtains.

When Marcus wakes, he wakes slowly. He feels calm through the golden light of the morning. He’s fifty-three years old again and he isn’t crying. His hands still ache for something that isn’t there, but that’s easily ignored.

He sits up, takes in the room around him. It’s so unlike all the carbon copy motel rooms he and Tomas had been staying in before finding Andy and his family on that island in Washington. Before Cindy and visions of small handprints on church walls. The room is worn and decorated cheaply, but it feels like a home. The blanket at Marcus’ middle looks homemade. There’s a mirror standing in the opposite corner of the room, angled so Marcus can catch his own reflection. He looks rested, shockingly enough.

There’s the empty space next to him where Tomas had once been. It feels gaping and still fresh. It’d been his choice to leave and he’s sure that Tomas would have him back if Marcus asked. But something (Marcus wishes that that something felt more like _God’s Plan_ ) tells him that, right now, this is the way that it should be.

His neck aches. Marcus has slept in this bed before, knows this crick intimately. He rubs at the tight muscles on his shoulder blades and listens to the quiet, pleasant conversation downstairs. He can smell breakfast cooking, he realizes, and he wonders if this is how a family vacation would feel like.

He takes the steps downstairs slowly. There are framed photographs above the bannister. He recognizes his hosts: Christopher and Elle Stephens. They’re in most of the photographs. The faces that fill out the frames are unfamiliar. Warm and cared for by their companions, but unfamiliar. Marcus notes that there aren’t any photographs of children.

“Oh, shit.” That’s Elle, and her voice is coming from the kitchen.

“You okay?” And that’s Chris. They sound just the way they did the last time that Marcus was here. God, how long ago was that? Twenty years by now. At least. Shit, that’s too long, isn’t it? That’s too long for him to have waltzed up to their front door last night, rain-soaked and terrified. Mumbling something about finally hearing God’s voice, finally feeling Him back in his hands. And about how that should make him feel joyful and righteous, but only leaves him with a pit in his stomach because the only word God seems to be saying to him is _Tomas, Tomas, Tomas_.

Marcus steps into the kitchen. Elle looks up from the pan she’s frying potatoes in. Chris looks up from his newspaper too. They pause, unsure of what they should do, then they both smile.

“Marcus,” Elle says fondly. “Good morning.” She comes to him, sets her hand on his belly and kisses the side of his head. Marcus finds himself closing his eyes, melting into the touch. Has he always done that? Has he always needed and craved touch so ardently?

When Marcus opens his eyes, Christopher is also standing nearby.

“How was that bed?” He asks.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Marcus quips back.

Chris smiles, small and knowing at first, and then breaks out into a wider grin. Elle smiles too. She moves aside, moves back to the stove and lets Chris take her place.

“You look better,” Chris says, fixing the neckline of Marcus’ old t-shirt, pulling it over his pointy collarbone.

“Anything would be better than the way I showed up last night, I think,” Marcus says back. He reaches up; his hand brushes against Chris’, and pulls the neckline of his shirt back to where it was. He smiles, keenly aware of an unspoken history and familiarity with one another’s hands. Chris smiles back, rolls his eyes, and gives Marcus another affectionate shove before he returns to the kitchen table, returns to his newspaper.

“You’re not wrong there,” Chris says, opening the newspaper in the middle. “I’ve seen you look like shit, Marcus. That was…” Marcus looks down at his socked feet. There’s a hole in one of them. He prepares for the worst. When Chris doesn’t finish, Marcus looks up. Elle is watching her partner protectively. Chris only shakes his head solemnly. He doesn’t have the heart to finish his thought.

“It’s been a rough few years,” Marcus offers.

“You should have told us where you were,” Elle says from the stove. “About St. Aquinas.” Marcus nods. He chews on the inside of his cheek. It’s too early in the damn morning to be feeling this guilty. “We would have come to… To see you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Marcus croaks. He smiles sadly. “Just… After… Mexico City, I wasn’t much one for chat.”

“You never really were,” Elle allows.

“Yeah,” Chris says from behind his newspaper. He lowers it slightly, peers over the top of it. “Your conversation’s always been shit.”

Elle bites down on her lip to keep from laughing. She turns back to the stove. But Chris doesn’t crack a smile. He’s always been better at that than Marcus. Trying to mock offence and indignance, Marcus raises his eyebrows. He can’t help the grin.

“You are just,” Marcus starts, shaking his head. “The _worst_.”

“And yet here you are,” Elle throws over shoulder, smiling fondly.

“Here I am,” Marcus says back.

He sits down opposite Chris. Underneath the table, he feels Chris’ foot nudge against his shin. He smiles reassuringly. All jokes aside, he’s glad Marcus is here.

Then Elle is hovering over them, spooning fried potatoes onto their plates next to some eggs and a sausage. She saves some for herself and shoves those into a small Tupperware container unceremoniously. Marcus watches her, his brow furrowed.

“What?” He starts. “You’re not joining us?”

Elle pauses, then looks over her shoulder. She smiles, but it doesn’t feel as genuine. “I can’t,” she says vaguely.

Marcus looks from Elle to Chris, who’s sipping at his coffee, keeping his eyes anywhere but on Marcus.”Why not?” Marcus asks. He hates the petulance in his voice.

“We leave you to our work,” Chris says. “Why don’t you leave us to ours?”

Marcus keeps his eyes square on Chris. Waits for Chris to look his way. When he does, Chris looks serious and immovable. Marcus hears the Tupperware container snap shut and he looks away. He watches Elle collect a bottle of water and an old rucksack sitting against one of the table legs. There’s a Devil’s Trap embroidered one one of the pockets. Marcus looks away, swallows hard and feels his jaw set.

“What, you’re not going with her?” He asks Chris.

“I can take care of myself,” Elle says.

“That’s not what I’m saying—” Marcus starts.

“Marcus.” Chris’ voice is short and to the point. Marcus turns towards him. He’s as stern as any father Marcus has ever seen. Chris looks from Marcus to Elle. He takes a deep breath. They both look like they’re in the middle of a decision. They’re keeping something from him. Or wondering how to put whatever that is the most delicately. When had Marcus become a man who needed things put delicately?

“Marcus.” That’s Elle now. Her lips form the same word, but it sounds different from her. It sounds soft and approachable. “Things have changed since the last time you were here.” Marcus swallows hard. He keep his eyes down on the old hardwood. “We divide and we conquer. I work alone because we’re used to it.” Marcus looks up at that. She sounds sad and Marcus feels something in his chest shift. “Because we have to,” she explains. “Because there’s just too many of them.”

Marcus thinks of Mouse. He thinks of the final thought that Elle isn’t vocalizing; one that Mouse had been unafraid to shove at him: there’s too many of them, and _we’re losing_. Marcus nods and he looks away. He hears Elle shuffle towards him, feels her hand on the back of his head. He takes a deep breath, relishing the touch.

“Besides,” she adds. “Somebody’s got to babysit.”

“Wow,” Marcus says, balking a laugh. He shakes his head when Elle laughs too. She kisses the top of his head fondly and heads towards the door before Marcus can tell her that he wants her to stay.

He and Chris sit in silence. They listen as the front door opens and shuts behind her. Marcus can feel Chris watching him.

“Go on,” Marcus says, then he looks up to meet Chris’ eye.

“What?” Chris asks innocently.

“You wanna say something, so go on and say it,” Marcus clarifies.

Chris smiles. His eyes dart from Marcus’ eyes, down to his throat and back. And Marcus knows exactly where this is going. He smiles, self-deprecatingly, and inadvertently rubs at his neck, where his collar should be.

“You weren’t wearing your collar last night,” Chris observes. “You’re not wearing it now.”

“We do have the option of civvies, you know?” Marcus responds.

“You always wore your collar,” Chris tacks on.

“Yeah, well,” Marcus concedes, sitting back in his seat. “Hard to wear something that, technically, isn’t yours anymore. They took it from me.” He says it quick, like taking off a band-aid. “Excommunicated.”

Chris leans forward in his seat, spilling the space that Marcus just left. “Are you okay?”

Marcus takes a deep breath. He gives Chris a once-over. Chris is bracing himself, expecting the worst. So Marcus gives it to him gently, and doesn’t even have to lie to do so. “Well,” he starts introspectively. “I’m back on speaking terms with the man upstairs, so…” He shrugs helplessly when Chris raises his eyebrows questioningly. “I think I am, yeah.”

“Is that all it takes?” Chris asks. Marcus looks at him defiantly. He’s given an answer, it isn’t his fault that Chris doesn’t like it. “To make Marcus Keane _okay_.”

Marcus shrugs. “A good book, maybe. Soul music.”

“Marcus,” Chris says.

“What?” Marcus snarls back and immediately regrets it.

Chris sighs. “Nothing.” He looks defeated. He shakes his head and looks down at the meal his wife has made for him. He’s a good man; gracious and caring when it counts. Marcus feels small and petty next to him. That smallness and pettiness burrows deep under his skin, itching and clawing and until he says the only words he know will make that feeling go away.

“I’m sorry,” Marcus offers. He sounds sincere and bitter as all hell about it.

Chris nods and Marcus knows that that’s all the acceptance that he’ll get. “I don’t want to push you, Marcus,” he says. He steels his voice when it starts to shake. “But _not talking_ has always been your downfall.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right about that,” Marcus says. He smiles sadly. Then he wants nothing more than to change the subject. “You look happy,” he says. “You both do.”

Chris smiles contentedly. He plays with the ring on his left hand and nods. “We are.”

“That’s good,” Marcus says because he knows it’s the right thing to say.

“I guess you could…” Chris trails off and when Marcus looks up at him, he’s waggling his eyebrows playfully. “Find someone, now that you’re…”

“That wound is still fresh, mate, thank you,” Marcus says with a chuckle.

“You’re good for people, Marcus, that’s all I’m saying,” Chris says. “And they could be good for you.” Chris pauses. He looks down at his hands and fidgets with his fork. “Who’s Tomas?”

“Didn’t you just say you didn’t want to push?” Marcus asks. He says it with a smile, tries to play this all off as a joke. But Chris isn’t kidding around. He doesn’t smile the way Marcus thought he would. “He was my partner,” Marcus says gently.

“Right,” Chris says.

“We worked together,” Marcus adds.

“I just hope that when we… _Worked together._ ” Chris heaves a heavy sigh. He doesn’t mean to talk about their past, who’d they once been to one another, but he doesn’t see any way around this. “I hope you said my name the way you say his.”

Marcus chews on the inside of his cheek. He takes a deep breath. He looks at the empty seat between them. The seat that Elle should be sitting in.

“Does she know about us?” Marcus asks. “When we…”

Chris doesn’t allow him the chance to put proper words to what they did and what they were. He smiles, thinking of his wife, and nods. “She knows everything about me.” Marcus smiles back. He bites back the urge to say: _that must be nice_ , but Chris reads him like an opened book anyway. “You know, that’s what people do. They trust one another. They tell each other things.” Marcus smiles, feels a lecture coming on. He knows Chris well enough to know when divine knowledge is staring him straight in the face. “Now, this may not be my business, but I got a feeling that a few more words could have solved this heartache you’re feeling. For… _Tomas_.”

“Probably,” Marcus says quickly, without giving himself the chance to think much more of it. “But I didn’t have the strength to find them.”

“Do you now?”

Marcus scoffs. “It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Chris answers honestly. “I guess you’ll have to decide that when you see him.”

Marcus thinks of Tomas. He thinks of his smile, his hair, and how it had felt to have all those things within reach. He can’t imagine that sort of contentedness and security. They’d, after all, said goodbye for now. Not forever. _For now_. But Marcus is suddenly overcome with just how unworthy he would be to occupy the same space as Tomas, breathe in that same air. Reach out and touch him, as though he deserves it.


	2. the good ones always seem to break

In his sleep, Tomas sees Marcus standing over a black river. He hears Marcus saying his name. He watches Marcus, looking intently at the storm clouds above him, his fingernails digging into the old wood railing until they start to bleed. 

He sees Marcus and the ache in his chest is enough to drive him awake. 

He sits up, knows he’s in some motel room in Kansas, but when he closes his eyes, he still sees Marcus. 

Mouse steps in from the parking lot. She pauses; takes in the way his shoulders heave with each breath and how there’s something clouding over him that he just can’t shake off. 

“You’re awake,” she says. 

Tomas starts to nod. He rubs at the sleep in his eyes, looks up at her and nods again. “Yes,” he says. 

There’s a closeness and intimacy that they haven’t developed yet, but she asks anyway: “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Tomas answers honestly. “Just a… Strange dream.” He smiles at her, but it doesn’t even feel genuine; he doesn’t want to think about how it must look. 

“A dream,” Mouse repeats, testing the water. “As in…”

“It wasn’t a vision,” Tomas finishes for her. 

Mouse nods. She’s satisfied with his answer, but doesn’t look wholly convinced that he’s alright either. She looks uncomfortable, so Tomas appreciates it when she asks (stumbling through the question): “Do you… Want to talk about it?”

“No,” Tomas says through a laugh. Mouse nods, scratches the back of her head nervously. “Thank you,” he tacks on sincerely. He watches her cross the room, towards her bed, and the opened duffel sitting on top of it. She places a few last things inside of it and zips it up. 

“We should go,” she says without looking up. “Before the roads get busy.”

Tomas furrows his brow at her. He pushes the blankets off of him, then throws his legs over the side of the bed. She’s on edge, but Tomas doesn’t know why. Their latest exorcism had gone well. They’d expelled the demon from Christian Connors, high school running back who would be going on to play football for Kansas State next year, quickly and Tomas hadn’t seen where they should go next. Things felt… Calm. For the first time since Tomas had left Chicago, and everything he’d ever known along with it. 

“We don’t have a case,” he says carefully. 

“There’s always a case,” she says back. 

“Marcus and I,” Tomas starts as he stands. “We would wait—” 

“I’m not Marcus,” she interrupts, finally looking up from her duffel. 

The room falls quiet between them. It hasn’t been long enough for those words to not leave a mark. Tomas nearly flinches. He looks away from her, out through the ratty curtains and across the parking lot. It’s a beautiful morning out there. None of that warmth and gold reaches him in here now. 

“I know that,” Tomas mutters. 

He doesn’t need to look at Mouse; he can feel her soften. The air around her is filled with apology. “Tomas,” she says gently. “Marcus was very good at what he did,” she starts. Tomas looks at her, fiercely protective of what she might say next. She looks sorry even before the words leave her mouth. “But we don’t have the time that he did.”

Tomas shakes his head. “I worked with Marcus for six months before you found us on that island.” Mouse nods, understanding where he’s coming from, willing to listen, but unwilling to relent or admit that she’s wrong. “We worked quickly. Efficiently. We  _ saved _ lives.”

“You did,” she agrees. “And with every one, we lost two.” Tomas shakes his head solemnly. He knows she must be right, but can’t bear to think about what that means for them. “Christian Connors?” She steps towards him, slowly and gingerly, like he might run if she moves too suddenly. “That was the fastest exorcism I’ve ever been a part of. The only thing quicker than what you can do is killing the host.”

“We don’t kill,” Tomas says, almost like a mantra. 

“No,” Mouse says, nodding her head. When she’s close enough, she touches his elbow softly. He sighs heavily. “You have a gift, Tomas. A gift that means we’ll never have to kill another host again.”

“I know,” Tomas says, but what he really means is  _ thank you _ .  _ Thank you for letting me use it _ . 

“It’s like I told you,” Mouse says. Tomas finds himself steeling with her resolution. “There’s always a case. So we keep moving. We find one.”

Tomas nods. He feels the warmth and peace of a new day. Calmed now by purpose rather than serenity. 

 

—

 

It’s early when Marcus hears glass break downstairs. It’s early, but that wakes him up real quick. He sits up in bed, ramrod straight. The sun is barely up outside. Beyond shattered glass, he hears bodies stumbling over one another. He hears Chris’ hushed voice murmuring softly over and over. He sounds like he might be crying. He sounds scared. 

Marcus climbs out of bed quicker than his years should allow. He throws a sweater on as he takes the stairs down towards the living room. 

Chris is standing over the couch. Elle is lying down on it. Her hands are against Chris’ shoulders, holding him as close to her as she can manage. Chris keeps his hand on her shoulder. There’s a bandage already applied there, but it still looks sore. The wound it’s covering is still bleeding. 

Chris holds a glass of water to Elle’s lips, lets her take a drink and then pulls away. 

“What happened?” He asks from the entrance to the living room. 

Chris looks over his shoulder at Marcus, startled momentarily, but clearly trying to look more casual than Marcus imagines he feels. He shakes his head. On the couch, Elle covers her eyes. She looks embarrassed. 

“It’s alright,” Chris tells him. 

Then, Elle lowers her hand and smiles. “I’m okay, Marcus.”

Marcus doesn’t know what to say. He knows what it feels like to be lied to. 

Chris sits down on the edge of the couch. He brushes Elle’s hair off her face. “You should go back to bed,” he says. “It’s early.”

They all know that isn’t happening, but Marcus knows when he’s told to leave a room. He crosses his arms over his chest and starts to nod. “I’ll put on the coffee,” he offers instead. 

Chris nods graciously before Marcus turns and goes to the kitchen. 

Their coffee is instant, but better than what Marcus is used to. He makes it quickly, knows this kitchen well and intimately. He sets out three mugs even though he knows that might be a little ambitious. 

He feels Chris in the doorway, watching him, before he hears him shuffle towards the kitchen table and sit down. Marcus fills two mugs and sets one down in front of Chris. Marcus takes the chair opposite him. He watches Chris over the brim of his coffee. Chris feels scrutinized, Marcus is sure. 

He’s proven right when, unprompted, Chris tells him: “We’ve been hit with worse.” Marcus nods, as though that’s enough of an explanation. 

“Should she be in a hospital?” Marcus asks. 

“We know how to look after one another.” Marcus nods again. He knows when he’s being shut down. Chris rubs at his eyes and takes a deep breath. Marcus knows he doesn’t mean to be short. He knows it’s been a long morning. “She already looks better than when she got home,” Chris allows. 

“That’s good,” Marcus says. “Did she tell you what happened?”

Chris shakes his head. “She says she let her guard down.” Chris smiles, shrugs haplessly. “Didn’t give me much more detail than that.”

“That doesn’t sound like her,” Marcus observes. 

“She said it was looking for something,” Chris says. “And that it would go through anything to find it.”

“What was it looking for?” Marcus asks, leaning forward. 

“A man,” Chris says. 

“A man,” Marcus repeats. 

“She said it called him Lazarus,” Chris explains. That means about as little to him as it does to Marcus. So he just listens as Chris continues. “A man who could give himself to the darkness and evil of Hell and come back from the dead.”

And maybe  _ that _ means something. Marcus looks down at his coffee and thinks of Tomas, likely, at this time, looking at a cup of coffee of his own. He thinks of Tomas back in Chicago; a parish priest with too much to lose. Then he thinks of him in that abandoned shack on the island in Washington. He thinks of Tomas kneeling next to Andy Kim, losing himself to the demon in the both of them. He thinks about firing that gun and  _ begging _ Tomas to  _ come back _ and he did. 

“No man can do that, Marcus,” Chris suddenly says. 

Marcus looks up. Something in Chris’ voice gives him pause. “What?”

“Whoever Lazarus is…” Chris shakes his head. “Maybe he is a man. But he has to be something else too.”

“Like what?” Marcus asks, and he already sounds defensive. 

“I don’t know,” Chris answers honestly. “You haven’t… Heard anything about this? Someone who can…” There aren’t words to describe what Tomas can do. Marcus watches Chris desperately try to string something together that might begin to describe it. And Marcus remembers exactly how that feels. “Let the demons in?”

Marcus suddenly finds it impossible to look Chris in the eye. He takes a sip of coffee and then shakes his head. He can’t bring himself to say no. 

“Whoever it is, Marcus,” Chris says, leaning back in his seat. “We can’t let them find him.”

“And what are we supposed to do when we find him?” Marcus asks carefully. 

Chris looks away and isn’t sure he has an answer to that yet. He shakes his head. “I don’t know. All I know is, if the demons want something that bad. Whatever they need it for is going to be  _ biblical _ .”

“And so we what?” Marcus asks. 

Chris chews on the inside of his cheek. “I think we have to hunt it.” Chris shakes his head. Hates the idea of going after anything that isn’t purely demonic. “You’re sure you haven’t heard anything?” Chris asks again. 

Marcus feels his throat tighten and his hands go cold. He offers the only thing he can: a lie. “No.”

 

—

 

Mouse stops for gas as soon as they’re out of the city. The landscape around them had very quickly fallen into friendly suburbia. Mouse is inside, paying and grabbing extra water. Who knows how long they’ll spend in the car. She keeps them well-stocked. She’s very good at what she does, Tomas would never deny her that. She is ruthless. She is gruelling. She in an exorcist. 

There’s a loud crack from behind the small station’s convenience store. It jerks Tomas out of his thoughts. He looks out the windshield. Studies for where that sound had come from. It had undeniably been a gunshot. Tomas hates that he knows that, but he knows it in his bones. 

There’s another car filling up at the pump next to him. It’s a young woman. She stares down at her cell phone as she distractedly fills up her sedan’s tank. That crack— _ that gunshot _ —hadn’t grabbed her attention. Which means it hadn’t actually happened. Logically, Tomas knows that. But he unbuckles his seat belt anyway and slowly climbs out of the pick-up. 

The woman looks up at him when he shuts the door behind him. She sees his collar and smiles, politely, but uneasily. He imagines he probably doesn’t look like most priests she’s seen. Not anymore. Not since he left his parish for an open road and lightless bedrooms. 

He approaches the convenience store. He sees Mouse inside, waiting behind two other customers. He walks down the side of the building. He feels tethered to something behind the convenience store. He keeps putting one foot in front of the other, pulled towards something he knows will be dark, but he can’t bring himself to stop. 

He takes the corner. There’s a dumpster pushed up against the back wall of the convenience store. A pair of shoes stick out beyond it. Everything else about who this person is, is still hidden. Tomas, swallowing hard, feeling his pulse at his wrists, steps forward. Needs to know who it is and if he can still help them. 

Then, a second body staggers backward out from behind the dumpster. Tomas feels his insides turn to stone. He forgets how to breathe. Because  _ that’s Marcus _ . He’s  _ right there _ . He staggers backward. He hasn’t noticed Tomas yes. He’s shaking and his eyes are wet with tears. He brings his hand to his eyes, wipes at the fear and worry now living at his forehead. 

“Marcus?” Tomas says.

Startled, jerky like a frightened animal, Marcus turns towards him. His eyes wide, mouth hanging slightly open. He turns and Tomas sees the gun in his other hand. Marcus steps forward. There’s blood on his hands and splattered onto his cheeks. He looks shaky and wild, and Tomas finds himself unconsciously stepping backward. Marcus catches the way Tomas wants to keep space between them. He stops, devastated, watches Tomas imploringly, then seems to accept the fear he now instills in his partner. Marcus looks down at the gun still in his hand and starts to nod, small and to himself. 

“You should be afraid,” Marcus says, voice hoarse and practically a whisper. 

“No, it isn’t…” Tomas begins to explain. 

“You’ll see me again,” Marcus tells him. Confident and unflinching. He steps towards Tomas and this time, Tomas doesn’t back away. He stands tall, lets Marcus take up the space in front of him that had once felt like it belonged more to him than it did to Tomas anyway. 

“I know,” Tomas says, matching Marcus’ confidence in that fact. 

“No,” Marcus hisses back. He shakes his head.  _ You don’t understand _ . And Tomas doesn’t even know what he doesn’t understand. “You’ll see me again and God will have given me a purpose.”

“A purpose?” Tomas parrots back. “What purpose?”

Marcus takes a step backward. His jaw quivers as he tries to keep every emotion in check. He swallows hard, takes a deep breath, then he raises his gun and presses it flush against Tomas’ forehead. 

“Marcus?” Tomas asks. 

This will be his purpose? Ordered by God Himself to kill Tomas Ortega. Tomas feels his chest heave. He keeps his eyes square on Marcus’, looking into them, deeper than he ever has. They’ve done the impossible with and for one another. Maybe they can do that again. 

Then, there are two more people behind Marcus. Tomas has never seen them before. A man and a woman. The woman grasps at her shoulder. Blood seeps through her fingers from a wound there. 

“You have to do this, Marcus,” the man tells him. 

Marcus looks down at the ground in front of him, but he keeps the gun where it is. 

“Marcus,” Tomas says again, willing the world around them to fall away until it’s just the two of them. 

“I’m sorry,” Marcus says. He says it in a way that makes Tomas feel as though he’d gotten what he wanted. It’s just the two of them. But it isn’t enough. 

Tomas hears another crack. Another gunshot. He closes his eyes tight and when he opens them, he’s alone. Marcus is gone. The strangers are gone. The body slumped against the dumpster that Tomas knew had to be Andy Kim is gone. All he’s left with is a devastating hole in his heart that God’s love had once smoothed over. 

“Tomas?” That’s Mouse. Tomas doesn’t even have to turn around to know that. 

He holds his eyes on the spot where Marcus had been. 

“Yes,” he mumbles back. 

Mouse hesitates. Long enough that Tomas turns to look at her. She looks worried. But determined. She knows that they’ve just been given a puzzle that they have to burn through and solve. 

“What did you see?” She asks. 


End file.
